Roland Yeoman's entry

***the format really got screwed up, stoopid Blogger***

New Orleans. The Big Easy. The French Quarter. Bright lights, easy sin.

Yeah, right. Not if you're me. Victor Standish here. Thirteen years old and dumped on these very uneasy streets by a mother who could care less.

She kept telling me it was for my own good as she ditched me from Detroit to Memphis to here. Like most adults, what she meant was that it was for her own good.

I figured a graveyard would be empty at night. Spooks are for little kids.

Shows you how wrong I can be ... occasionally.

Alice, the ghoul I met by Marie Laveau's crypt, looked grimly at me. She spoke as if she came from a Jane Austin novel.

"Those dealers in drugs had better be more plump than you as you promised."

The night mists curled all around the two of us. I looked up at the full moon that seemed to be warning me with hollow eyes.

It would have made a great scene in a horror movie except there was no director to yell "Cut!" Besides I didn't think Alice cut her food.

She just chewed it.

Like the creepy fog, she flowed silent beside me. Yeah, no walking for her. She glided beside me without stepping once.

The moon beams seemed to go right through her. She looked like a goth Alice in Wonderland with her long black Victorian dress, high topped shoes, and black silk gloves that went up past her elbows.

Strange gloves though. There were no fingers to them.

Alice saw where I was looking and spoke in a cultured British accent, "The better to lick my fingers clean after I'm done ... eating."

She was trying to scare me. Doing a hell of a job, mind you, but she was trying too hard. I had to stop this path of words 'cause it was leading to nowhere I wanted to go.

"We have to be careful, Alice. It's not safe out here for a young girl like you."
She pulled up straight and still. "You do know what I am, do you not?"

"Sure. You're beautiful. And that's dangerous on these streets."

She looked at me as if every one of my teeth had fallen out and hit the sidewalk to the tune of "Yankee Doodle Dandy."

Her eyes became slits. "What did you call me?"

"Oh, c'mon. North is North even if it's a dangerous North. So you're a ghoul. Nobody's perfect. But you're also beautiful in an ethereal, haunted way. And on these streets, beauty's a curse."

She cocked her head at me, her long blonde hair becoming a living waterfall. "You speak strangely."

"Look who's talking."

Alice's too-blue eyes studied me. "You talk like an adult."

"Yeah, well that comes from spending most of my time with adults."

I made a face. "No, that's wrong. I spend most of time running from them."

I rubbed the back of my neck. "I guess it comes from me spending all the time I can in a library, reading Homer, Conan Doyle, and Burroughs."

I smiled crooked. "They let you stay in the library as long as you're quiet. And I can stay quiet with the best of them."

Alice's lips twitched. "Not so I notice."

Her way creepy blue eyes widened. "Oh, my! Not them. Not now."

I forced myself to slowly turn around, and my heart sank like the Titanic. "Oh, jeez. What is it with the French Quarter? Is this whole place haunted. Who are these things?"

Alice's answer was a hoarse whisper, "Les Bonne Dames."

"All right, maybe I should have asked what are they?"

"Mere memories of malicious will."

"I'm so happy I asked."

Dressed all in white like brides on their wedding days, the ghostly women wore a strange perfume that tickled my nose in all the wrong ways.

They looked at me with angry, hungry eyes, drawing their white shawls about their opening mouths to cover their needled teeth. I remembered something old Suze had told me : Snatching those shawls would give a thief brave enough to do so power over them. Yeah, like I was going to do something way stupid like that.

Alice glided in front of me and spoke firm. "He is mine."

An odd trilling, not sound, not light, rippled from their mouths, and Alice shook her blonde head. "If I choose to play with my food, it is my concern. Not yours."

The trilling got ugly, and I stepped around Alice. "Well, bring it on, ladies!"

I jerked my thumbs to my chest. "I'm Victor Standish, and I've fought bullies all my life. You're just better dressed than most."

Alice whispered, "Have you gone insane?"

"Depends on who you ask."

I turned back to them. "Ladies, you just think you're bad. Me, I've fought bad ... like the Amal. You know, those living, hungry shadows."

I pointed past them. "The ones right behind you."

They turned. No more trilling. They screamed. I went stiff.

Shadows, so black they looked like sin given life, oozed from all the corners of the alley. Oh, shit.
I had been bluffing, hoping they would turn and give Alice and me time to split.

It was Les Bonne Dames that split, leaving Alice and me to face the circling shadows, whose form you could make out in glimpses of slowly moving insect-like legs and clutching sharp pincers. "We are doomed," sobbed Alice.

I smiled wide. "No way! We're saved. These creeps only eat those who despair."

"I am a ghoul, idiot! I despair each moment of every day."

I saw the Amal slowly close in on us. I ignored them. I jerked a thumb at me, then a forefinger at her.

"Not anymore, Alice. We're a team now. Trust me, we're gonna set the French Quarter on its ear. When folks talk about 'Alice and Victor,' there're gonna be smiles."

A blonde eyebrow arched. "Oh, all right, there'll be lots of fear first. But then, there'll be smiles and sounds of laughter when they start to talk of all the crazy, wild stunts we've pulled."

Alice looked deep into my eyes. "Y-You really mean that, do you not?"

"I'm Victor Standish, and I don't lie."

Alice slowly smiled, her blue eyes sparkling wet, and she spoke softly, "Alice ... and Victor." Those eyes blinked back tears.

"Alone no more."

She wheeled to the suddenly still Amal. "Wretched spirits! Tonight you do not feed on me. Tonight I feed on you."

Alice grew misty, her arms reaching out and drawing back to her chest. The Amal screamed hoarse and were slowly sucked into a laughing Alice like dirty dishwater swirling down into a gurgling drain.

Then, they were gone.

She turned smiling to me. I managed a smile back. Yep, no doubt about it. At first there was going to be lots of fear.***